TEHRAN -- About 40 percent of the protagonists of world children’s stories, which have been written in other nations, are Asian, scholar Taraneh Matlub mentioned during a meeting of the Children’s Book Council of Iran on Monday.

Matlub, who has been granted a fellowship from the International Youth Library at Munich to conduct research on “Cultural aspects in international children’s and youth literature” in 2008, said that although the setting of these stories is in European countries, the protagonists of stories are from Asia.
She went on to say that she has reviewed 103 novels and illustrated books written by authors of children’s books about other countries’ culture during recent ten years.
“I have many questions in mind concerning authors who write about other cultures and countries as to why they write as they do. The questions can be addressed by using three different approaches: social, academic and literary. I have tried to answer the questions from a literary perspective,” she mentioned.
Most authors who wrote about other cultures are from Australia, Britain and United States respectively and most of the books written are about Eastern countries primarily India, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Most of these books are about a Muslim woman who endures numerous afflictions, a theme that has gradually evolved into a cliché in western literature, she mentioned.
She named racial discrimination, love and friendship, terrorist attacks, immigration, political asylum and women’s difficulties as the main themes of these books.
Some 89% of books’ characters are human beings of which 44% are male and 43% of books are illustrated books, she mentioned.
She cited the interest of journalists and political activists’ in other cultures, protesting against a government’s policies, multicultural backgrounds in families, multicultural marriages and adoption of foster children as authors’ motives for writing these books.